Sunday, September 09, 2018

Was Ben Rhodes the Anonymous Author of the Notorious NY Times Op Ed, supposedly written by a high administration official?

Expanded on 9-12-2018

The anonymous, hostile to Pres. Trump, op ed in the NYTimes the other day is shallow, superficial, full of platitudes, generalities and cliches, lacks specifics, and contains stock phrases and stupid hyperbole. It also lacks policy discussion, except on the shallowest, most simplistic level. Instead, it appeals to the emotions. For instance, the title of the piece starts out: "I am part of the Resistance . . ."
In both English and French this word resistance evokes the romantic mystique of liberation. For educated Americans of the older generations, it evokes the real-life hero, Jean Moulin, of the French WW2 Resistance, or the fictional hero Rick [played by Humphrey Bogart] and the French police captain [played by Claude Rains] in the romantic WW2 film Casablanca. The use of the term resistance is thus an appeal to the emotions. [To be sure, Jean Moulin was executed cruelly by the Nazi German forces. No such fate awaits the author of the NY Times anonymous op ed.]

All these features of the piece lead me to think that the author was likely NOT a Trump administration official. Maybe, it was suggested to me, the anonymous author was one Ben Rhodes, a speechwriter for ex-president Obama. It contains certain stock phrases that Obama used to use in his speeches [written by Rhodes]. These phrases include "Don't get me wrong" and "To be clear." It also has "Take . . . " used to introduce an example.

Furthermore, it sounds as if it were written to be a speech. To be sure, the sentences are well-constructed --as if for a speech. Of course, speeches were and are Ben Rhodes' stock in trade.

What does the NY Times say? "The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration." Yes, so they say. But is the NYT above lying? The Times lies by commission and omission. The NYT falsified a quote from even the Pope. The Times had the Pope saying to suit-wearing terrorist, Mahmoud Abbas, "You are an angel of peace." Of course the Pope has made many mistakes, but to call Abbas "an angel of peace"? Instead the Pope said, "You could be an angel of peace if " you reached an agreement with Israel. But the Times preferred its own inaccurate translation. When this was pointed out to the NYT editors, they quietly changed the on-line text without acknowledging the mistake. So yes, the NYT has lied and does lie and no doubt will lie.

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Sept. 5, 2018

President Trump at an event in August at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

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The world swims in lies. Who doesn't know that? Even the dupes are told there are lies about. We aim to dispel the fog of lies, especially about Israel, like our prophets of old and our poets like Yehudah haLevi.
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Dvoyreh bas Yehudah Leyb, Eliyahu's mother. My own photo will have to await more peaceful times.
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